Marc Erlbaum seems just the kind of guy you'd want to hang out with over a cup of coffee -- which makes the premiere of "Cafe," set in the caffeinated grounds of West Philadelphia, an appropriate choice to perk up a conversation on the eve of its premiere at the Philadelphia Film Festival pff10.org on Oct. 16.

In this space two weeks ago, I discussed my 20-year journey from movie-mad adolescent to disillusioned adult. My passion for films, which was so strong from such a young age, began to wane in the mid-1980s, when action films and inane comedies began dominating the screens, causing me to lose all interest in seeing anything new. But recently, I've begun...

Philadelphia's "One Book, One Jewish Community" program officially kicks off Sunday with a discussion led by this year's selected author, Mitchell James Kaplan. The Auerbach Central Agency for Jewish Education/Jewish Outreach Partnership announced that Kaplan's first novel, By Fire, By Water, would be the focus of this year's program before it was even published in May. That was quite a...

If not for a friend in a secular choir who referred him to a Jewish choral gig, Robert Ross might still be singing Christian requiems instead of Jewish psalms. He'd always identified as Jewish, but hardly had any experience with the religion while growing up, much less the music. "There were vestiges of Jewish life in our household, but it...